


Moonrise

by Thistlerose



Series: Midnight Conversations [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Backstory, Bigotry & Prejudice, Gen, Protective Parents, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 21:45:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in 2004.  Remus wanted to go outside to see the full moon, and, not thinking about the possible dangers, his father let him.  Now Nicholas Lupin blames himself for what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonrise

Nicholas Lupin watches the moon rise over the blackened hills. It’s a breath away from full. Really, to aging eyes or to young eyes that haven’t seen so many moons, it could be mistaken for full. _Why in Merlin’s name_ , thinks Nicholas dully, _could Remus not have waited?_

Last night was cloudy. Tonight is clear, much better for sky gazing. Why didn’t they _think?_

Something hisses through the tall, dry grass, and Nicholas leaps to his feet, wand at the ready, Stunning Spell on his lips. But no one’s there. It’s only the wind.

The moon turns the grass silver. Nicholas thinks of his boy lying broken, feverish, and terrified in bed upstairs, and it occurs to him that Remus is now as good as adrift in a sea of silver. There’ll be enemies all around him for the rest of his life, and they won’t be like the thing that attacked him last night when he went out to look at the moon. They’ll be subtler and more malicious.

Behind him, the Auror says, “Go inside, Lupin. Your wife and son need you. It won’t come back here. You won’t find it.”

He didn’t hear the Auror join him on the front stoop, but he supposes they’re trained to move silently. He hears the words; ‘it’ strikes him like a knife in the gut, once, twice. But, of course. The thing that came by here last night was a beast, not a man. 

“You could pass it on the street, Lupin,” says the Auror, “and you wouldn’t know.”

“I’d know,” Nicholas says without thinking. “Believe me, I would know.”

“And what would you do? Kill it in human form? A Killing Curse, man? And spend the rest of your life in Azkaban? That won’t help your boy.”

“No one cares if you kill a werewolf!”

His snarl of rage becomes a bitten-off howl of pain, and he has to clutch at the banister or he’ll fall.

“Go inside,” the Auror says, bracingly, at his shoulder. “Go be with your wife and son. Leave this to the professionals. In situations like this it’s best that the family look after each other. Leave the rest to the ones who know what they’re doing.”

_You don’t know_ , thinks Nicholas, but he lowers his wand and allows himself to be ushered into the cottage. 

He’s almost ill as he makes his way, slowly, up the stairs, but manages to contain himself. He must be strong now. Merlin, he can never stop being strong. Until he dies he will not be allowed to stop fighting.

But that’s not the fault of the five-year-old boy who lies shivering in bed, pale as moonlight and seemingly as fragile. He looks lost under all those blankets.

Sylvie looks lost, too. She’s lying beside Remus, stroking his hair, her face almost as white as his. Her own dark hair falls in tangles about her bowed shoulders. She doesn’t glance up when Nicholas enters the bedroom.

Does she blame him? She has the right, he thinks. He’s the one who told Remus he could go outside last night. He’s the one who brought them to Wester Ross for the summer. _It’s safe_ , he insisted.

She doesn’t say a word, though, just reaches out with one hand and gropes at the air. He catches her hand and joins her wordlessly. 

This is how they used to sleep when Remus was a baby: on either side of the bed, with Remus between them in his basinet. Nicholas’ father used to tell them it was a bad idea, that Remus would grow up timid and too dependent on his parents. Nicholas thinks it’s the reason Remus seems to cry less often than Nicholas’ friends’ small children; he’s never had any reason to fear abandonment.

Merlin, how Nicholas has failed him.

_Take the boy and run_ , he wants to tell Sylvie. _Go to your sister in Avignon and stay there until I can find a better hiding place._

But he knows about werewolves who have tried to run. The Auror has told him: a transparently veiled warning. The ones who run are always caught and made to suffer. 

Sylvie thinks they’ll find a cure. The Healers insist that there is none and never will be, but Sylvie has seized upon the idea. Muggles, she insists, are always finding cures for things they thought could not be cured. Wizards can, too.

Nicholas can’t bear to tell her that this is a vain hope, and neither, it seems, can the Healers.

He does not know what they’ll tell Remus. The boy has woken a few times, and each time his parents have insisted that everything will be all right.

What can a five-year-old think a promise like that means? That his parents will be able to undo what happened? Impossible. That his parents will never leave him to suffer alone? Can a five-year-old understand such a concept as _never_?

They’ll teach him, Nicholas thinks as he unthreads his fingers from Sylvie’s and takes his son’s small hand -- the uninjured one -- in his own. That’s all they can do, really. Teach him. Protect him. Love him. But that was always their plan, so in a sense, nothing has changed. 

Remus whimpers in his sleep and all thoughts about the future fly from Nicholas. He and Sylvie bend over their child as though shielding him from hostile spell fire. Remus twists slightly under the coverlet and whimpers again, then slips back into a deep sleep. His parents don’t move. There is an unspoken agreement between them, that this is how they’ll be when Remus wakes again.

In a way, this is how they’ll be forever.

07/02/04


End file.
